ETHAN'S cooking school teaches diabetics to manage food choices

Courtesy photo BAKING CHICKEN and using spices to season are ways to cut down on fat and salt in your diet, according to Irma Dowden.

When what you eat literally becomes a matter of health, perhaps even of life and death, it's time for some serious cooking lessons. Enter ETHAN, East Texas Home Health Access Network, and the Heart Throb Cafe. On Fridays once a month ETHAN offers free diabetic and heart healthy nutrition and education classes.

The next class will be Nov. 16, 10 a.m. to 1 p.m., and will consist of a full holiday menu that students will see prepared and then get to sample all the healthy alternatives to the usual heavy holiday fare.

Shelly Milner, certified community health worker, and Irma Dowden, team leader, collaborated on the program that teaches people how to eat well for better health. They decorated the kitchen in the ETHAN building at 117 W. Houston in a 1950's black, white and red motif that is popular once again, but many of the seniors remember the first time The Comets rocked around the clock.

"These classes are open to anyone. Some people come to learn on behalf of a relative, because they are preparing meals for someone who is diabetic or needs to watch their salt," Milner said. "We do ask that they make an appointment so we know how much food to prepare. We generally have 20-30 students. Many of them were referred to us from disease care management programs."

Every Wednesday, diabetics in ETHAN's program check in with Milner. When their monitors are downloaded, she can see if they are keeping their blood sugar at proper levels and counsel them on food choices.

"We check everything," Milner said. "We do a foot exam because diabetes causes poor circulation in the lower legs and can lead to infections that are hard to treat. We find out when was the last time they had an eye exam where their eyes were dilated (because diabetes can lead to vision loss).

"But the real key to diabetes management is understanding portion sizes- what you can have and how much of it," she said. "For heart patients, we may emphasize reducing salt and fat, but that is actually good for everyone."

Jeanine Johnson is the nutritionist who helps plan the meals.

"We do things like a lean pork loin roast, and teach them to use herbs like rosemary for flavor instead of salt," Milner said. "We'll pare that with green beans and cornbread, and then a baked apple. We always have a dessert."

Dowden said they also discuss eating out and eating in a restaurant. "We help them understand there are always choices to be made, and some choices are better than others."

Dowden said many restaurants have hearthealthy menus, or you can ask to have your food prepared without oil or butter. There are also many new products that are easier for diabetics to use, like the insulin pen that you can set just by clicking. You can do it in a dark restaurant, and even blind people can use it by counting clicks."

Home Cooking

The biggest obstacle the health care workers have to overcome is habit. If grandma always cooked green beans with salty pork or added lots of sugar and butter to carrots and sweet potatoes, that's the way people think it should taste. The tradition of frying food and cooking with salt and fat can be overcome, but it takes showing people other cooking methods, letting them become familiar with the taste of herbs and lemon and other ways to make foods flavorful.

"We teach them to bake or grill instead of frying," Milner said. "We tell them if they are using canned vegetables, to dump the liquid out and rinse them in fresh water to remove some of the salt. If they want that sweet taste there are many sugar substitutes on the market now."

"We tell people you don't have to starve yourself. In fact, that's the worst thing a diabetic can do. You need three meals a day and two snacks, and you can go ahead and sample everything at a holiday meal if you have small portions.

"We tell people to have a taste, just remember not to splurge," Milner said. "And, after a time or two, they realize that I'm going to find out when I check their monitor the next week. It easier when they finally 'get it'- that they are doing better for themselves."

To make an appointment for the holiday cooking class Nov. 16, call ETHAN at 384- 2099.